AFA Warfare Symposium
Transcript
12 February 2024
Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition: A Senior Leaders Discussion with the following leaders:
– Frank Kendall, Secretary of the Air Force
– Kristyn E. Jones, Performing the Duties of Under Secretary of the Air Force
– Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations
– Gen. David W. Allvin, Chief of Staff of the Air Force
– Moderator: Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville Wright, USAF (Ret.), AFA President & CEO
***These transcripts are based on recorded sessions. While we have strived for accuracy, please be aware that there may be some discrepancies and typos.**
Frank Kendall:
We owe it to all those who have the courage and commitment to volunteer to fight for our country and our values, to give them every advantage that they need to succeed with that mind and bring us to the most patient challenge that we have ever faced. China, China, China.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are out of time. We are out of time. We are out of time. Why do I say that? It’s not that I enjoy sounding like a broken record. Because for at least two decades, China has been building a military that is designed purpose built to deter and deceit United States if we intervene in the western Pacific.
Some of you had a chance to hear the classified spec briefing earlier today. I don’t have to explain to you why time is my biggest concern. War is not inevitable. When you charge, integrated deterrence is working. So far, our allies are a great strategic asset. And together we can take on any challenge. It’s great to see so many out here today. We’re glad to have you with us. But unfortunately, the potential for conflict at anytime is real. There’s a title of this conference preparing for conflict. United States does not seek to conflict, we have every hope that what can be avoided. We are however involved in a competition and enduring competition that could turn into a conflict at any time. We can no longer regard conflict as a distant possibility or a future problem. That we might have to confirm the risk of conflict is here now that risk will increase with time. Our job, our fundamental mission, the reason we exist, is so that we can be ready now. And always the name of the game is deterrence with the church rests on strength and the will to use it.
Xi Jinping has told his military to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027. Even if the US intervenes. You recently told President Biden directly that China will in his words, unify Taiwan with Trump. you enforce he reinforced this to the Chinese people in his recent New Year’s fake regards, again, his work the unification of mainland China with Taiwan is quote inevitable.
You don’t know what China will do, but when it won’t do it, but 2027 is just three years away.
So a conflict could happen at any time. Even if it has not happened to either return, miscalculation or incident that escalates out of control. We must be as ready as we can be at all times. Right now China is watching events in Ukraine or Russia is touching all results.
If we allow Russia to prevail, there is a real risk of that. If our financial support does not continue, trying is almost certain to draw the conclusion that the US lacks the will to preserve the international norm against naked aggression. The norm that we fought to present him to establish 75 years ago we abandon Ukraine at our own peril, and substantially increase the risk of future conflict, both in Europe and the Pacific. Over two years ago, I came into this job knowing that we had to move out on modernization. We started to work on seven operational imperatives. The seven operational imperatives were designed primarily to inform our investments in the future aerospace forces that work in a major impact on the FY 24 budget that was submitted a year ago.
We’re still by the way, waiting for the Congress to appropriate the FY 20 for funds that we need now to modernize the Aerospace Forces to defend the nation. Congress if you’re listening, and therefore, appropriation would be very well and once again please do not subject us to disastrous your long car and see perspiration personal note. You will be very disappointing to me to have been in office for an entire administration and have never received any of the needed resources to be competitive resources that we identified in the first six months I was going off the operational imperative and cross cutting operational lever work we have started will continue and it will inform future budgets. Both China and Russia are actively developing until they more advanced capabilities designed to defeat us power projection. For modernization against capable well resourced physique adversaries, never stops of modernization isn’t the only thing you need to do to be competitive.
Today we are announcing 24 key decisions we have made to improve both the readiness of the current force our ability to stay competitive over time to continuously generate enduring competitive views general Saltzman not to my comments. The other members of the Department of the Air Force senior leadership team will each discuss the changes we have decided to make and why we reach those decisions. The Undersecretary will announce three changes in the department the Air Force Secretary they’re all going we’ll discuss 15 changes in the Air Force and all sorts then we’ll discuss six changes in the Space Force. All of these are intended to make us more competitive and to do so for the sense of urgency. We are out of time. over decades the Air Force adopted to both an austere budget environment and the counterinsurgency counterterrorism mission. This has moved us away from optimization for the requirements of great power competition. For years after its creation, it is time to reevaluate the spacewalks and how it is postured to provide forces for the ability to compete and the winning space against appear for living the purpose of the Air Force Secretary. The Department of the Air Force lacks some of the decision support and measurement tools that are needed for great power competition for our airmen and guardians from the total force, including our garden reserves, you did what your nation has to do. You deploy the austere regions of the world, combating terrorism and violent extremism and made the homeless as well done.
What do we need to be both ready now and to compete overtime? We need fully capable units with all the assets menu just like China or possibly Russia. On short or no notes. We need units fully ready to either deploy or conduct operations in place. Also, on short, prevail notes. We need mechanisms to ensure these units are in fact ready and address any shortfalls that may be found. need the right mix of Airmen and guardians with the skills necessary for high end combat and to ensure technological superiority? We need orders organization’s focus on the readiness of the current source. And we need organizations that are focused on the future ensuring that we have enduring competitive advantages. And we need an efficient and effective pipeline of technologies flowing continuously to do more competitive capabilities for our highest priority list. Short need to transition to a great power competition focused enterprise and we need to do it now.
For the last four months, we have worked intensely on defining needed attributes that aligns with our for addressing these needs. I’m very grateful to all those who led and participated in how did that work? You ended up focusing on our four aspects of our enterprise: people readiness, power projection, and capability development. our decisions are grouped into these four categories or 24 key decisions where your thoughts are discussed or not the entire story, there are a number of additional steps that we will be taking. There will be more changes to come. Gen Saltzman has noted he must be focused on competitive endurance which is often emphasized. We are going to follow through on your important point in the journey. We have a long way to go. You have to go forward together as one team ready for one site for any site.
There’s a lot to take in. Here’s a way to think about the big picture of the changes we often make. First, just the warfighting units and organizations are going to focus on current readiness. Second, you’ll create new organizations focused on future competitiveness and future capabilities. Third, you’re going to enhance and elevate our capacity and tear is critical for success in great power competition. And fourth, you’re going to strengthen our most precious asset, our people. What’s going to happen next. The top level decisions have been made but we have a lot of details left the work. We have identified the leaders for the planning and execution of each of these decisions. Each decision will have a timeline for planning and execution. Consistent with the nature of the decision. Timelines will vary from the immediate former year.
The intent is to disrupt is to avoid disruption or cost costly position consistent return the effective execution. successful execution of these changes will be the Department of the Air Forces and also your leaders top priority.
The team you see before you will be ensuring that we move out with a sense of urgency that DOD complete the execution of all the decisions we have made. There is no time to waste. We are going to turn this enterprise and pointed directly at our most challenging threat.
We are going to follow through on the decisions we are announcing today. we are going to do so with a strong sense of urgency. Changes hard Losing is unacceptable. Going to turn over now for the undersecretary to talk in more detail. but we got here about the changes will be making the department Air Force Secretary will be followed by Saltzman, then we will take your questions. Thank you. God bless are many guardians in all of those who serve
Kristyn E. Jones:
….At the end of the process, we need to assess how successful we were in accomplishing what was. So that’s the key of any organization. In addition to that, we also look at other aspects of our operating model. And we realized that we needed to adjust our governance and the oversight of many of our processes and functions needed to enhance those systems and the data that underpins our decision making. We’re also implementing enterprise risk management, so that we can make better informed enterprise decision calculating risk throughout the process.
Finally, we’re updating our roles and responsibilities and key positions to align with the functions that we need to manage for great power competition at the enterprise level.
So why do you care? These changes at the secretariat will help us to make the leaders tend to stay ready and to be more effective.
This effort is not about efficiency or doing more with less over the last three years, it’s more efficiency over counter conflict, that the world has gotten more dangerous, or battlespace is increasing. Technology is advancing. Our decision space is shrinking. The pace of our adversaries is accelerating. And all of this is driving so what does this look like for you?
These changes will allow better integration to help us to have more effective interfaces and to operate with other systems. We’ll be putting operators into the process early, which means systems will do what you do or what you need them to do when they’re not years later.
Improving our analytics means we’ll spend time and effort on the things that we need to be effective and less on those operating model. Eliminate delays and barriers for timely access to resources, information and support.
In this strategic environment, you will face incredible challenges. So we know that you will adapt and overcome in a way that our adversaries are people are what make us the greatest Air and Space Forces in the world. And the driving purpose behind these changes is empowering them to be successful to ensure you have the resources, equipment and training to be successful.
So one final thought before I turn it over to the change is hard, harder than making the status quo less comfortable than doing what happened upon the appropriate quote. So what we can expect. It might be a little hard to read, but I’ll pick on some of the highlights. So this is a picture that actually a quote from Dobbins office that hangs on his wall. The Secretary has a very similar one and he’s in it. President Roosevelt explains. The credit belongs to the man or woman who’s actually Who strives valiantly, who spends himself in a worthy cause. while daring greatly belongs to the credit. Your own government for quite a while and I know that organizational change is always difficult. There’s no shortage of individuals that will criticize and question the need for the changes that we’re making, without ever getting in the arena.
We have no time for these changes will move us in the right direction. As the Secretary says they just hard the losing is unacceptable. So my talks to all this join us.
bring your ideas, your feedback, your perspective. You show shoulder to shoulder with the teammates, not from this. We are out of time And we must purposely with a sense of urgency. That’s why team. One fight. We must follow.
General Allvin:
What we’re talking about here is something different. So for those of you who really love the Superbowl yesterday, you’re already having a drawl symptoms when you put it in that, imagine you are a championship team, a dynasty team if you have been optimized to run the iPhone, but since then the game has changed the rules and the players and everyone’s running this trade off. If you’re still running information, it’s gonna be harder.Oh, by the way, the rules favor.The opponents know that they’re adapting to that and they’re getting better faster. That’s what this is about. That’s taking this airport that has the best talent, the best teamwork and re optimizing it to be able to dominate in this game the way it’s going to be played now.
I want to pick up on one sector again, these are the four areas that we sort of were bucketed into when you look at something in the developing people entering readiness, projecting power development capabilities. We’re trying to do two things at the same time.
We need to both be ready today with the force that we have. We need to approach that with a sense of urgency. So in the areas that I talked about the projecting power and the generally written that is about getting our fourth ready to date, to project power men are needs to be for the fight should it happen soon. We also need to update we optimize Garrison the processes the policies, the authorities, and in some cases, the structure to be competitive for the long term.
You need to do both of these at the same time. And that’s the goal of these decisions.
I’ll leave you with one other thing before I get into this. You will see within some of these decisions that were integrated integrating this is a key word. The key thing when you said about this, we looked at some of the desired attributes to the Department of Air Force that you would want and many of those terms are like mission over function, enterprise solutions, deliberate integration with the pace of change of what the adversary and technology we can no longer afford to move slowly. And if you want to move fast and coherently you have to be in unison, you have to move it.
So let’s start with the most important part that makes or for successful RP.
One of the decisions that we’re going to expand the role of education and training community, renewing the program and development. We have a loosely integrated form of force development in our Air Force. In that we provide the policy and we disseminate that watershed into the functional areas in different or disparate areas throughout. Unfortunately, we expect those leaders to be able to interpret it in the way that we intended. But without an organizing construct, a way to align the general direction that we’re sending the force, those interpretations are largely start to divide in and divergent to a certain extent. This is what we want to bring back in and one one commander accountable for the alignment of the force development activities, whether that be political history and their PhD programs and fellowship programs and making sure that they’re targeted towards the challenges that are force faces now in the future. But even more importantly, the learning tools that are used throughout the different functions in our Air Force.
Delta command commander will be the sole commander responsible for integrating the requirements to ensure that when an airman goes from one part of our Air Force to another part of Air Force, they don’t need to relearn the systems and tools and they can develop faster. By integrating this Under Armour developed man we believe we can have a more coherent force, single air force that can move rapidly through the future. We’re all also reinforcing mission ready training. Now make no mistake, our airmen are ready for any missionary training.
We have to adapt not only teaching airmen that come into BMT tech training, just the technical skills, but also an appreciation of the environment, their appreciation that they’re going to take things just beyond their own narrow functional specialty. To the great credit errands patient transplant is already starting this. We’re seeing the changes in basic military training and a testament proliferate to all institutional training. So our airmen know what they’re getting into from day one.This also extends to a pre commissioning training in ROTC. And an OTS specifically looking at the Air Force Academy we have an opportunity to upgrade and advance the cadet experience to ensure that those cadets once they throw their hands and they are ready to lead in a complex environment. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re talking about a doctrine that we say we believe in that’s about mission command. It’s about empowering at the lowest competent level, because we expect those young airmen to lead in this complex environment. disconnected, solving complex problems in small teams need to ensure that we’re providing a training so they can do it as soon as possible because we’re going to need them as soon as they come to us.
We are in the competition for talent, and we understand that technical talent is going to be so critical to our success as an Air Force in the future. We have developed within our core and our enlisted core tech tracks. We’re looking into those to enable those in our enforcement officer force to pursue the technical path without having to choose between that and the leadership. And we think that’s going to take great strides, but we need match people. We need to be able to have technical talent and we’re a very specific variety now and in the future. So we’re going to engage in developing a warrant officer program specifically for cyber and IT professionals to be able to ensure that we have that technical talent now in the future. Why are we doing this? You know, there are people who want to serve. They just want to protect. They would like to network attack people and do that business.But everybody needs to see themselves into the future beyond just this assignment of the neck. So developing that warrant officer track for this narrow career field. We anticipate will drive that talent in and help us keep that there’s something specific about this career field. It’s a nice match for a Warrant Officer Program. the pace of change of the cyber world, the coding world and the software world is so rapidly advancing. We need those airmen to be on the cutting edge and stay on the train. So we’re going to pursue that almost in the area of developing people. One projecting power.
We’ve seen what the threat is doing. You see what the operational plans are requiring. We have a joint warfighting concept. We have an Air Force future operating concept, all these force design in the future that tell us how we need to present those forces to be able to fight on day one.Now, I mean how we deploy forces often is that we will take one of the mission elements, the first one and a bunch one and take it and we’ll take the rest of the forces sort of crowdsourcing from amongst our Air Force and they will meet in fear that does not work. Against the patient job. So we need to ensure that our combat lanes are coherent units that have everything they need to be able to execute their wartime tasks. And that can come into deployment combat wins, where they need to pick up, deploy, employ, generate and sustain power and theater. There is so much work that once you do that in place we need to ensure that where they reside, where the project power comes from in place. They have all that they need not only in the current environment, but should the balloon go up when we can anticipate all the more complicated. They need to be able to execute that wartime mission in place.
And the third type of combat win is a win that we may not expect to deploy as a win.
But we still need to apply combat to those combat winds. So we can have integrated airpower for the combatant commander.
So when I talk about its ability to project power in a flexible way, this is what we mean. These rings, these combat wings are going to be standardized and that they will all have these three layers as we call it. And there’s a modularity here, there’s a command and control layer, which is the commander in the staff, the ability to be able to execute a plan and execute the wartime tasks. The mission layer is the mission generation we’re familiar with. So the ops and the maintenance and generating that combat power. And then there’s an assurance that where they’re engaged in combat whether it be in place or deployed.
They can sustain your ability to protect the force to do the logistics to do all of those things that will enable that to happen. And when we’re talking about modularity, here’s what I mean.
What if the combatant commander wants different combinations of airpower to come and support a particular crisis in more conflict? So say for example, we’re going to deploy an FFT when that will come that one needs to be ready to take those forces and deploy forward with all the C two and all the sustain. But what if we also would like an F 35 Squadron as well will then have to replenish water should be able to plug into that unit and go what if we want to use tankers to be able to generate sorties or or C 130s to be able to have theater airlift in there, those mission layers that the squadron leader should be able to plug into this deployable combat wing. This gives you the flexibility of providing that airpower to get the bad commander without having the brittleness and the high cost where we tried to do this with composite wings in the 90s. So that modularity provides for flexibility with coherency at home.
And in this feature fight we cannot expect that there will be a benign environment in the installations that are here after the deployment is gone. We have to be able to not only fight for but understand what it takes to continue to defend and operate the base at home. But we can expect disruptions, perhaps cyber attacks, things to where we need to be able to ensure that we can continue to project that power and push up a combat power for or continue in place, combat wings to support that fight and eventually going to be different than it used to. We need to understand and yet the former commander wouldn’t want him or her focusing on that deployed mission. So we’re gonna have a severability between deployable combat and the base command. Make no mistake, that base command is going to need to support that deployable combat when getting out of town. The primacy is on that comment when we need to ensure we know what’s left and it’s coherent, and it’s able to fight the bass. So that’s the part of the severability between the wing command and the base.
And finally, it’s important that we have an alignment with our service component commands and the combatant command in our most critical areas, and one of the more notable ones will be we’re elevating AF cyber from being underneath Air Combat Command to being a directors components.
This reflects the importance that we understand the cyber is going to take in future warfare, and it also enables that direct relationship and for us to better understand and articulate the risk and also develop capabilities within our Air Force to be able to continue to support that.
That’s projecting power. Now that we know how we want to project power, how we generate the readiness to be able to do that. We’re going to reorient ourselves to more large scale exercises rather than the smaller scale there have been products in the last two to three decades. Large scale means multiple weapons systems, multiple capabilities coming together in a combat simulated environment and showing our ability to execute the mission that’s going to be expected that was in the high income. Now, this is not like we’re waking up from zero on their own. The exercises that we have been undertaking are getting bigger. Red flag has really been our weapon school integration exercise, we are moving beyond just what they used to be. So the force gets this. They’re doing it organically. They’re doing it sort of on a on a handshake. We’re seeing bamboo Eagle just happen and it was one of the better joint exercises that we just had, but it wasn’t designed from the tongue down. It was at the level of the weapons officers and a tactician said we need to do this.
Our Air Force needs to institutionalize this. And we’re going to do that we’re targeting fy 25. For one for our first throw, run at a large multi combatant command support which never supports just one Combat Command and our attention is there that we need to exercise and stress. And we’re looking to do that in conjunction with a single airwalk targeted at indo-PACOM; these are not designed to be distractions, they’re designed to be reinforcements and have enhanced deterrent value as well. This is where we’re heading in exercises. Now when we’re exercising on a large scale. We need to understand what a good exercise wasn’t know what a bad exercise was right now. We measure our readiness in C one C two ratings of squadrons to be able to execute their mission essential tasks according to their doc statements. So we do. I do not have in front of me a document or a schema that says we know exactly how well we’re able to execute part of our Air Force return operating concept, which is the fight to get out of town and to fight to get into theater and a flight to get airborne.
Those involve multiple parts of our Air Force that we haven’t really put together a schema on which we assess readiness for that and our inspection cycle will follow in on this as well. But we’re going to reorient towards this only when you have assessments. Can you really find out the details and for resources against the Secretary mentioned in the opening. We want the commands who are accountable for the readiness to be able to focus on readiness. I believe this is probably going to play an outsized role for Air Combat Command. Because if you don’t know Air Combat Command commands, the lion’s share of the service routine forces that we have and for the forces that that that command doesn’t have underneath, underneath their command, there needs to be a unity of effort to deal with those other forces that are Combat Command designed to track calm or transcode.
The idea that someone can be accountable to synchronize and oversee the large-scale exercise to look at air force readiness, not just the individual readiness of units. That’s going to be very important to understand this comprehensive readiness and we anticipate an outsize role in Air Combat Command to be able to do that.
Once we know that, find the shortfalls in our readiness for this readiness in our ability to deploy or employ or sustain. This is where we want to prioritize race again, prioritize support against folks, we don’t have the money and peanut butter spreading it to share the pain is not the way we need to do it. We need to understand those critical capabilities, those critical vulnerabilities. We only know that through exercising and assessing and then we can make sure that we get the help on the shelf for the right things we need to do to employ, whether actual employment as a combat employment scheme, or generation of combat power at a tempo that’s faster than what we can do now. That’s where we need to prioritize support. This is all in our generating readiness category and developing capabilities. I mentioned that we’re going to have an outsized role for Air Combat Command. And we’re going to have those commands are accountable for readiness, focusing on readiness the way we have right now, those commands need to focus on today’s readiness and at the same time, focus on tomorrow’s capabilities and when you do that, by your nature, you are intentionally or you are deliberately making internal trades because you’re trying to manage the risk of each, which means you’re optimizing for your current function. You’re part of the Air Force. You’re not optimizing for the whole air force, but we asked you to do both. We’re not doing that anymore. So what we’re doing is we’re going to stand up a three star command and read capabilities command. It’s just what the name implies is that the capabilities will be integrated. We need the expertise that comes from the current match comms and understand about the future but they will design and they will put the requirements in and test one Air Force.
Not some of our functional unfortunately, we have to put them together later. It’s important that we have a force design. We want to ensure that we develop an air force that can improve upon that force. Design test that forces it is one of the things that an integrated capabilities command will do. This is where the operators will test operational concepts against our forces.
They will also ensure that when we have modernization initiatives, those are rationalized to ensure our current force and gets to the Future Force in a way that makes sense.
So we’re gonna unintentionally put modernization on platforms that really don’t have a long term play in the future force design and waste money. We don’t have money to waste we don’t have time to waste. That will be one of the roles of this integrated capabilities committed not only to look into the future, but to make sure we can get to the future through a prioritized set of requirements that supports one force design for one Air Force.
Now in order to do that, they need a counterpart and this is an entity that will fall under Air Force Materiel Command. So replicating some of the successes that we had with the operational imperatives in which we looked at it from the operators perspective, we also looked at the technical feasibility, and through that, through that partnership or relationship and back and forth, we developed these operational barriers to develop capabilities that made smart monetization decisions. We shouldn’t have to stand something out like that ad hoc. We need to institutionalize this and this will be one of the parts the relationship between this integrated development office and integrated capabilities.
Additionally, the Integrated Development Officer Air Force Harold command will appreciate how many single demands after these modernization priorities are assessed and developed for consideration and decision then that comes with a single demand signal rather than multiple demand signals to Airforce material. Once it no one Air Force the future these two will work very much very closely together. We’re making a couple other changes within Air Force material command to account for the fact that nuclear business as our business has been since we stood up basically and always will be. We need to ensure that we don’t take our eye off the ball has been wanting to happen in the past. We’re not there yet, but we need to make sure the organization helps us to stay on focus too. So we’re taking our nuclear weapons center and we’re elevating it to a nuclear System Center, in which case it goes beyond just as current remit and is vested with additional authorities to drive integration across the nuclear material management enterprise to make sure it is a true center of excellence. Academic coherent nuclear management, material management enterprise that is responsive to what we know should and is a demanding customer and Air Force Global Strike command and we’re elevating that rank to three star appropriate to its importance. And the casing if you haven’t checked the papers lately, we’re in the midst of one of the largest recapitalization of the nuclear enterprise or we’re after a capitalization in Department of Defense history right now. We’ve got and that’s not going to go away in a couple of years. It’s going to be with us for a long time. So we’re elevating the Program Executive Office for ICBMs to have to start appropriate to the task and the scope responsibility.
In addition to that we’re standing up and information dominance systems. Throughout the year. So we as we would develop platforms that were parts of functional air forces that made of our entire Air Force and some things sort of got dropped off the table. Electronic warfare, sea three battle management, cyber those things didn’t always make the cut because they were sort of if not afterthoughts, they weren’t the main thing. These are going to be central. When we are evolving into an Air Force in which systems should have a predominant predominance over platforms. We get the systems right we test the platforms or rather than build an Air Force around platforms, this needs to take center stage. See through battle management took an unnatural act to be able to get it integrated into a system that is now starting to catch fire.
But having this system Senator puts these together and make sure they are integrated sends a single again a single demand system to our force designed to ensure the integration with these systems. So this will be established and we will have a run by a three star as well. Now some of these capabilities on either one or two currently reside in the airforce Lifecycle Management Center. So we’re appropriately renaming it really what it is, which is that it’s really looking over the platforms and the munitions. So it’s we’re just basically renaming it the air dominance systems.These are within our capability development. These are the 16 key decisions for missing a key decision we’re going to make. I will tell you a couple things before I hand it over to Gen Saltzman. We are committed to these.
We do not have them exactly right. And I am unapologetic to stand here in front of you and say I do not know the exact final destination and here’s why. Because if we wait to move to have those final answers, we will be too late. We have to have trust and confidence that the analysis we’ve done has put us on the right path and I’m fully confident in that. We need to move we have the right vector and we can adjust once we get on course but you have to be moving to be on a course to adjust course. And that’s what we’re going to do as the undersecretary said let’s do it together. Because those from the sidelines don’t help. We got work to do.
General Saltzman:
I went to my first Air Force Association conference when I was a cadet in college.
And I have no idea what was said on any of the stages. Even though I was in a lot of those sessions. What I remember is the after parties, the hospitality suites so just to say how long ago was I got adopted by the command chiefs of SAC, tak Mac, ATC and they Shepherd me around to all of the hospitality suites and I think I learned more about the Air Force those evening events with them. But I didn’t the three and a half years in ROTC. But like I said, I don’t remember much of what happened on the stage. So I’m a little daunted here by addressing seems like 6000 people knowing that they’re more excited about getting to the after parties that may be listening to me as their last speaker today. But some important things do happen on the stage. For instance, I got a poster when I was a cadet at the AFA commission that said the why of 22 beat the why of 23 in the fly off was turns out was a big deal for the Air Force. I don’t know. So I think if you pay attention to the activities that are being described here, you’re gonna see the course of your Air and Space Forces for probably the remainder. Who’s the youngest in the crowd who thinks they’re the youngest in the crowd? Raise your hand, you’re not.
You’re gonna see these changes planned for the rest of your career, I promise. And these are these are fundamental shifts, because we have to get ready we must re optimize for great power competition. And it occurred to me as I was listening to these presentations, that this idea that we must re optimize is one way to say it. And another way to say it is we get to re optimize for great power competitions. Imagine the alternative where leadership wasn’t so excited about what was going on in geopolitics and with the threat environment, and you’ve probably got the resources you need, we train you just go do your job and get better at it. And we’ll address the threats as they come.
That is not an air or space force that I want to be a part of. And we get to reoptimize because this leadership team is telling you you’re gonna get the resources, we’re willing to change fundamentally everything about our services, so that we can get after the pacing threat, the PRC and the challenges they face. What a tremendous opportunity.
Now before I really talk about the activities that the Space Force is engaging in, let me kind of set the stage because there’s no question that the Air Force and the Space Force have the same goals. When it comes to re optimizing. We know what we need to do we know what the challenges are. But we are coming from very different perspectives and very different places in our history. And I think that’s going to challenge us even more on both sides. Because we have the team together we have to be integrated. But if you’ll go to my next slide, the idea that space is like any other warfighting domain, it is evolving, and it has evolved.
Way back when I was attending AFA conferences as a cadet we talked about space in terms of the strategic importance. There was a tiny number of spacefaring nations. It was basically the US versus the Soviet Union. Space capabilities were being used for strategic purposes. For competing narratives. In the Cold War, for providing our most senior decision makers up to the president of the United States critical strategic intelligence. That was the capabilities that the space brought to military organizations but it didn’t take long after the Gulf War to realize how much more space could offer. And after the war, we started to see the value that space capabilities to bring to the tactical edge, what it could do for precision, what it could do for over the horizon communications. We talked about things like Blue Force tracking from space. We’ve talked about putting data in cockpits, to cut the timelines between what it took to get from sensor to shooter. We invested heavily in trying to build the networks the data link structures, to bring space to the tactical edge. But primarily, that was about just providing the services that made what the Joint Force did a little better.
The next evolution, unfortunately, over the last decade or so, what we’ve seen is now we have to recognize that space is a fundamentally different domain. Now, if we’re going to be successful in meeting our military objectives, we have to fight for contested space domain and achieve some level of space superiority, if we’re going to continue to provide the services that the military needs but the joint force needs and at the same time, make sure that we have the capabilities to deny the adversary. The PRC is ability to target our joint force but their space enabled capabilities. They have built a network of sensors that has both increased the range and accuracy of their weapons systems. We have to be able to deny that that shift to an operational phase where we have to now build and maintain and maintain space superiority in order to continue to provide the services that the force has come to count on is what the real transformation is. So if you’re on the next chart, let me just explain maybe by analogy, what that effort looks like. In some sense, we are trying to convert a merchant marine into a navy a secondary candles use this analogy. I think it’s a good one because it can be used in so many different ways to explain what we’re trying to accomplish here. When when you’re using a Merchant Marine, you’re basically taking advantage of a safe and secure domain to provide services in the most efficient way you can the most efficient way to do it to some degree. That’s That’s what your space military space organizations were charged with. The space domain was relatively secure. It was pretty safe. And our job was to provide services to the joint force from that domain.And we did it very well. We did it very efficiently.
Now we find ourselves in a contested domain, where the charge to the force is much different. Now as a part of a joint force, we have to be able to contest, we have to secure the domain so that we can continue to use it and protect the joint force from space-enabled target. Now think about what that analogy means. The Merchant Marine is very good at what it does. But you can’t just tell the marine that they need to have a warrior spirit. They just didn’t, they just need to think like warfighters and they’re gonna be successful in contesting the domain, they don’t have the right equipment. They don’t have the right training. They don’t have the right operational concepts to do the task that they’ve been given. And I feel like that’s what we have to embrace. We have to understand that we have to transform this service, if it’s going to provide the kinds of capabilities to include space superiority that the joint force needs to meet its objectives. That’s the transformational charge. That’s the next journey.
I believe every warfighting endeavor could start with our people. Because it’s one of our biggest asymmetric advantages. We may not have as many as other nations do, quite frankly, in their domains, or in terms of the other services here. But we punch well above our weight, but we have to be able to give our people the training, the education, the experiences, that they’re going to need to be successful in the high off tempo, the high tech environment that they’re going to face and the legacy process that we had the legacy developmental opportunities were were good, but they weren’t sufficient for this new charge. Again, we can’t just tell the merchant marine to do a better job. Be more like a warfighter. We have to give them those experiences. One of the activities that we’re going to pursue initially as a part of this is redesigning the officer training course and the initial skills training of our officers. It’s my contention that it’s difficult to separate satellite operations, cyber operations, and the intelligence that you need to understand to deal with the domain into these stovepipes. have traditionally come in grown up around this is the satellite operator doesn’t understand the networks that disseminates the data. It doesn’t understand how to provide that data and a threat environment. They are not going to be successful. Likewise with the other disciplines. So we are building an initial training course that gives our officers all of those fundamental training. I believe that a cyber operator will be far better at their job descending the network, if they understand the salad operations and they understand the intelligence and the threat and how to ask the right questions to facilitate performing their job better.
Likewise with utilities, if you’ve been through the training as a satellite operator, if you understand the network imagine how you view the foundational intelligence that’s required. You can ask better questions. So we’re going to start with new career paths. We’re going to start with new training. And we’re going to start with the officers. But that’s not going to stop there. You have to recognize that all of our operators and all of the Guardians are going to need similar kinds of training and experience different from what they’ve had in the past is going to be successful in this high ops tempo, very technically demanding environment that will face the future. Next. It really comes down to readiness and I thought Jehovah did a great job of talking about, you know what we’re trying to get ready for and what changes that has to make. When I think about readiness, I go back to my squadron commander days and I think about the four elements of readiness that I had to report on every month. And for those that have been through that experience you kind of have to memorize. It’s the people. It’s the training, it’s the equipment, and it’s the sustainment. And those are still true for the Space Force. Those are true for any force, no matter how you describe it. But the legacy force that we had our roots, again, that merchant marine model, were built around efficiency, built to run up a nine environment. So the standards for readiness that we kind of held our forces to was just, it wasn’t built for the domains that were facing a contested domain. So we have to look at our personnel. Do we have the right mix of officers and enlisted civilians in our units to be able to do the kind of work that our workforce needs to do to be successful?
Is our training which for years, it was sufficient to say that procedural training and procedural competency and operating the weapon systems is sufficient. That was what was necessary to safely and efficiently operate our systems. As soon as you put a red force in the mix, as soon as you put a threat in the mix, it radically changes your training. You have to have advanced training, you have to have time to train. You have to understand how you work together in calm out of calm with other units in order to continue to achieve the kinds of effects in a contested domain when an adversary, a capable adversary, is doing everything they can to stop you from being successful. That’s a different training proposition. So we need to build that training infrastructure. The test infrastructure to validate our tactics will give the reps and sets to our operators. So they’ll be successful against this adversary that we know we’re probably going to face our equipment.
As I talked about diversion, Marines didn’t have the right equipment to be a navy. Likewise, the systems that we built were designed for a benign environment. We have to redesign our architecture. Redesigning systems to do a mission. So careless zillion against an adversary. We have to understand that they have to be resilient under attack, they still are able to perform that mission. If you go to the sustainment piece, a lot of our systems have to be available continuously. 100% availability in some cases, even knowing that that’s probably impossible to achieve. The sustainment models haven’t been there. So we talked about parts for ground based radars. It’s got to be there. When we talk about how we’re going to do upgrades to change algorithms in our decision support software, that sustain was going to be fast, because the algorithms are fast because the threat is changing fast. All of that are new standards. We have to rewrite the standards for readiness centered around a contested building.
And then once we’ve written those standards and once we put the forces through that kind of training, what kinds of generation drills do we have to figure out when we’re ready? We have to be able to assess and that’s from the individual all the way up to combined operations are we doing the drills, the evaluations, the bolting unit exercises, rehearsals, the WarGames the joint integrated exercises all for a purpose, a specific purpose building as we go to assess whether or not you’re ready to engage an adversary like the PRC.
Now we get to one of the more critical aspects of this, the sustainable portion of equipment is kind of a near term you have to be able to enhance our capabilities quickly but that’s not the large change. We are developing capabilities for the long term to continue to have managers and maintain those advantages for years to come in. The future operating environments are we evaluating the missions that we’re going to be asked to take off to accomplish. Thank God for AIS for reporting on some of the systems necessary, but we weren’t necessarily but didn’t really have the mechanisms to evaluate all the other components that have to be in place. What’s the proper form? What facilities, how sophisticated, how many units are going to be required to perform that mission? How do these units work together? What’s the operational concepts? That is a futures organization can provide? So we’re going to establish a space futures command that is combined the three centers that starts to ask these fundamental questions. That puts together a force that we can offer doesn’t just have the systems, it has the tactics, the training, the operational concepts, and leveraging the successful. The first center will be at concepts technologies, so it will evaluate the future operating environment, what’s it going to look like? What are the technologies that the adversary is going to use? And that we need to be able to use and how is that fundamentally going to change the nature of our operations?
How do we combine our tactics and operational concepts? Think about the type of space domain awareness that we’re going to have to do out to x GL cislunar.
How are we going to do that as we start to collect data on moving target indications, what’s the battle management process that your Space Force will use to make sure that the data from the sensor gets to the shooter operationally relevant timeline?
This is the kind of thought process that’s going to go through this concepts and Technology Center. And we have some ideas, we’re going to have to figure out what those ideas are good when they need to change or need to scrap. We’re gonna build a world war gaming center that helps us evaluate technology that helps us experiment with new technologies. It’ll help us validate concepts in war games through tabletop exercises. We’ll throw away the bat and learn quick it’s a learning campaign to make sure we put all this together effectively.
And then the third scenario I hope you’re more familiar with because we are going to leverage the work that’s been done at the space warfighting Analysis Center for years now. It is the data driven analytics that takes these ideas, puts them through the system, and allows us to use physics based models, modeling and simulation, high end data analytics, with PhD level analysis that says here’s the right options to pursue. Here’s the most cost effective way to do this. Here’s something that can work in this future operating environment. We’re going to take all those together and ask them for our objective force, the force design, what is it now in the near term, in the long term to maintain that competitive the last the last part of this is projecting power.
This is about presenting the right kind of forces to acrobatic manners so that they can be effective with the task that is going to come in two basic flavors. One is to combat squadrons and combat detachments that become our units of action. In the past, we’ve had these second space operations Squadron, the plasma GPS constellation, right, it has all of the responsibilities in the past of doing the day to day operations of the constellation, as well as all the equipment that works fine in the morning to contestability. Now I wanted to test the domain, we have to increase the capacity of those capabilities, those units so they can do the advanced training, do the high end enhancements that are going to be necessary. So it became important for us to separate out what the unit of action was. From the service responsibilities of heating that unit a second so combat squadrons becomes our unit of action. It is the employer in place concept that says this is what you get Combat Commander to do the day to day functions that are required. We’re going to retain some capacity now initially squadrons to do the high end advanced readiness activities, and we will rotate them through a fourth generation model so that the people in the obstacle are both ready. We have to fight tonight against the high atmosphere, but also to respond to those day to day tasks.
And then the second part of this is we are going to establish service components and a combatant commands as the receiver of these forces as the command and control as the experts inside the command commands domain that allows them to operate at that commanders off tempo with that commander’s priorities, and be and be able to integrate effectively, all of the space capabilities into the plane rather than being added on after the fact. You’re going to be there every single day. Inside those combatant commands, dealing with the priorities, the challenges, the opportunities that kvetch man has to wrestle only through that detailed integration. Can we take a second because they can kind of forces and succeed to optimize for competition. And then my last show, simply rolls this all together and says, what we’re really doing is building combat ready forces. That’s at the top of the chart. Can’t do that if you can’t combat credible units. We have no chance of deterring a very capable and determined adversary. That’s what we have to do is make sure that we are pursuing the right kinds of technologies. We are exploring, we are validated, and we are fielding the kinds of technologies that are gonna allow us to maintain our advantage in space. And then finally, it’s about the people. Making sure that our people have combat competencies. They understand what it takes to fight and win in the space domain. Be redesign the career paths or redesign of training, education experiences, to make sure they’re ready for this fight. We’re out of time. We have to be ready. You have to be ready tonight. And tomorrow’s got to be more ready than today. We got to keep looking at injury advantages. into the future. So that I challenge all of you to jump on board, we get to reoptimize for space. It’s not that we must re optimize for space. For a great power competition. We know that we get to re optimize it. So this is the opportunity of a lifetime to shape these forces against the threat that is going to challenge our country the most. Thank you for your time.
